From the National Tribune, 12/29/1891

Provisions from the North Help
Out the Scanty Ration.
SUFFERING FROM COLD,
How the Ill-Used Prisoners Spent their Time.

THE following letters were
written by Adj’t S. H. M. Byers, 5th Iowa, to his brother, while
confined in Libby Prison, at Richmond, Va., during the winter of 1863,’4:

LIBBY
PRISON,
RICHMOND, Dec. 8, 1863

DEAR JOHN: A little after
daylight, this morning; the doors of Libby Prison opened and received all the
Union officers captured at the battle of Missionary Ridge on the 25th
of November.

First of all, you will
want to know how I got here at all. [Here, at length, the writer describes the
circumstances surrounding his capture and was not transcribed]

On my way here, in North
Carolina, I bought another poor, thin rag of a blanket, and paid $20 for it;
that was at Weldon. Cigars were 50 cents apiece at Weldon, and whisky $2 a
drink. Am glad I use neither. Confed. money was worth $5 to $10 for $1 of Uncle
Sam’s money.

We passed Petersburg last
night, and this morning as the train crossed the James River bridge we saw
thousands of our poor Northern soldiers freezing and starving on a wet sand-bar
down in the river, known as Belle Isle.

All this is to let you
know how I happen to be here. I trust you did not see the Philadelphia Press
account of the battle, for there I was put down among the list of killed. Libby,
bad as they say it is, is still an improvement on being killed.

A flag-of-truce boat
leaves to-day for Fortress Monroe, and carries letters North. I may send this
so, or I may give it to a wounded officer who is to be sent North soon.

I can tell you little yet
about Libby, only that it is a great big three-story brick warehouse, owned by
Libby & Son; hence the name. They tell me there are 600 Federal officers
here now. I will write you many details soon.

MARSH.

LIBBY
PRISON, RICHMOND, Dec. 10, ‘63

DEAR JOHN: I write just a
line to tell you to be sure and send me a box with some provisions, such as
dried beef, coffee, etc.; but put no money in the box for the Johnnies go
through every package arriving for us and confiscate every dollar found.

When we were first brought
up-stairs into Libby, a committee of about 25 prisoners received us with yells
of “Fresh fish! Fresh fish! Who thinks he’s got a good thing of it! Fresh
fish! Fresh fish! Who ain’t a Copperhead? Fresh fish!”

At the same time we were
jerked, hatless and breathless, clear over the heads of the committee to the
floor among the other prisoners, amid yelling and laughing.

To-day I found out that
that ceremony is gone through with on all “fresh fish,” or new arrivals.

To-day a newcomer got
quite mad about it.

MARSH

LIBBY
PRISON, RICHMOND, Dec. 11, ‘63

DEAR JOHN: To-day I bought
of one of the guards the inclosed photograph of Libby. Cost $5 in Confed. money.
The prison stands close to the James River, with the Kanawha Canal between –
the latter close to the prison. The tents you see in the picture are the
quarters of the rebel guards.

There is a line of
sentinels about the building, who not only have orders to guard us, but to shoot
any prisoner showing himself at the window. A chivalrous set of fellows, these
Virginians are! It is right to say, however, that an occasional officer who
comes to the prison to see the Yankee lions, disapproves the outrageous
treatment we are receiving. We have more visitors, too, than you would imagine.
Almost daily some Confed. of standing, I suppose, is escorted through the prison
by Maj. Turner, the commander.

They rarely speak to us,
but their eyes tell what they think of us. The very prominent men among the
prisoners are pointed out to the visitors.

ONE OF THE BIG WIGS

here among us is Gen. Neal
Dow, the famous Temperance lecturer. He is a little bit of a gray old fellow,
with twinkling blue eyes and a pleasant voice. He is treated just like the rest
of us. The board where he sleeps on the floor is close to the board where I
sleep; for you must know that every fellow has his own board, where he sleeps at
night and where his things are piled up during the day. Many of us have cut
barrels in two pieces and made tolerable chairs of them.

At night we pile our
chairs up on a rude table made of boxes, provided we have one, roll ourselves up
in our single blanket, except where two sleep together and double blankets, and
when the cry of “Lights out” is heard proceed to sleep the best we can. When
morning comes we take our ration of cornbread (cob ground with the grain) down
stairs to where the cook stove is, grate the loaf, which is not half baked, and
then make a kind of porridge or mush out of the unsavory mess.

A few boxes of provisions
sent the prisoners from friends in the North have been brought into the prison.
The lucky recipients have divided generously with those of us who have received
nothing. So we have now our mush and coffee, and occasionally meat.

The ration, at the best,
you may know, is mighty poor, and not half equal to the shortest army ration
ever seen in the North.

I want you to send me, per
express, via Washington and flag of truce to Richmond, a box containing sugar,
salt, coffee, dried beef, a couple of flannel shirts, and a blanket. I have no
overcoat, and the wind comes in through these open windows

COLD AS GREENLAND.

My boots happen to be
good, and, as I remain in-doors here, I don’t much need a hat. My coat and
pants are strong and good for six months, by which time I hope to be out of here
and see the war ended.

I am beginning to make
acquaintances here, and find many interesting men in Libby. We dare write
nothing of the war, so on that subject expect nothing.

They say all letters sent
from or to the prison are inspected, but I much doubt it, - there are too many
of them, besides, I have seen some queer epistles that I know were allowed to
pass, or else were overlooked. The fact of the matter is, we prisoners know
nothing to write about. True, we see the Richmond papers often, but the
censorship is as strong on them as it is on us; and nobody of sense would
believe what he reads in a newspaper anyway, North or South, in these times.

I will tell you one thing
the Richmond Examiner does say, though, that is probably true. “The
Yankee prisoners on Belle Isle,” remarks this beast of an editor, Mr. Daniels,
“are likely to kill your dogs and use them for rations if you go too close to
the line where they are confined. Let it be so; it is right; it is dog eat
dog.”

Jefferson Davis reads the
vaporings of this scoundrel every morning at the breakfast-table, and then gets
up and puts his name to an official message, in which he says that, “spite of
our humane treatment, the prisoners are dying at a shocking rate.”

Did anybody in the wide
world ever read such heartless and outrageous impudence? He, more than any other
man, is guilty for what it going on in the South to-day. Some day he will have a
reckoning.

Don’t forget what I said
about putting money in boxes. I wrote you a long letter Sunday. Hope you got it.
Some home papers wouldn’t be amiss in that box.

MARSH

LIBBY
PRISON, RICHMOND, Dec. 14, ‘63.

DEAR JOHN: I expect you would like to know how we spend our
time here. Well, many play cards constantly, and many play chess. That is an
intellectual game, and time is not murdered by pursuing it. There are very many
fine players in the prison – one man who has never lost a game, and he has
been here six months. Occasionally the chess players of our room challenge those
of the room next to us, and the game assumes the interest of a little battle.
Such a game has been going on for two days.

Many read books and old magazines constantly; just such as
they can pick up, or as those who have a little money can buy by sending
outside. There is no choice, of course, and worthless novels are read as much as
anything.

Some, a few only, are studying text-books and reciting to
the better educated. One man has an old law book, and is committing it to
memory. Two or three are writing histories and experiences of Libby Prison.

Some keep careful diaries, myself among the number, and a
few experts with the penknife spend most of their time carving little trinkets
from wood or bone. I have made a cross of bone that would surprise you. It will
be a Libby souvenir worth having that I will keep all my life.

There are one or two men here who sleep nearly all the
time. I think they are glad to be in prison; it rests them. There are also half
a dozen Copperheads here, who wish they were somewhere else. They are pretty
generally despised. Think of a man with Union shoulder-straps being a
Copperhead!

More anon,

MARSH

LIBBY PRISON,
RICHMOND, Dec. 16.

DEAR JOHN: If you count the windows in the picture I sent
you, you can tell just about where I am located in Libby. The board of the floor
that I sleep on is near the first window north end of upper east room. I and my
messmates have a table made of a pine box. This box answers for table, wardrobe,
kitchen, and general magazine.

At night we pile our chairs, made of barrels, on top of it,
and so have room to lie down on the floor. Our boots serve us for pillows.
Strange enough, I sleep well on this hard, cold floor, except the nights that
are very cold, and then

IT
IS AWFUL TO LIE HERE,

hours and hours, awake, chilling, and wishing for daylight
to come, that I may get up and walk about. Of course all the prisoners must go
to bed and get up together, as the floor is completely covered when all are
lying down.

The first thing we hear every morning, before daylight, is
the loud voice of an old darky, Ben, who peddles the city papers, crying out,
“Here’s your Dispatch,” “here’s your Examiner and Whig.”
and “Great news from Lee’s Army,” “Great News from the North,”
“Great News from Georgia!”

That darky’s voice is our reveille, ad it is a welcome
sound. Sometimes he cries out, “News of Exchange; Prisoners to be Sent
North!” but when we see the paper after daylight we learn that the exciting
headlines of the paper are based on some little grapevine rumor.

No, we have almost given up hopes of exchange. We have been
deluded so often, so often. Thank you for the box and the “goodies.” Our
mess lives some better now. I am studying the Latin grammar you put in the box,
and recite to Maj. Marshall every day at 2.

MARSH.

LIBBY PRISON,
RICHMOND, Dec. 19, 1863.

DEAR JOHN: The following officers are in my mess: Maj.
Marshall, Lieut. Austin, Capts. Page and Bascom, and Lieut. Hoffman.

Our dinner today was corn bread (mighty poor), dried beef,
and water. Supper will be the same. There is a Sutler comes here, who will
furnish prisoners who have any money provisions at the following prices:
Crackers, $60 per barrel; bacon, $3 per pound; beef, 95 cents per pound; cheese,
$3 per pound; butter, $4.50 per pound; whisky, $75 per gallon.

Col. Streight bribed a guard today and got outside the
prison, but the sentinel betrayed him to Turner, the commander, who has put him
and one or two others in a dungeon. They call Streight the “Yankee raider,”
and both fear and hate him.

MARSH.

Dec. 24, 1863.

I inclose you program of our Libby Prison entertainment
to-night. All the prisoners who could sing or play on an instrument, and there
are many such here, helped in getting up a first rate Christmas Eve performance
in the kitchen. It was a jolly time, considering the circumstances. I wonder how
our friends in the North are spending this Christmas eve. The sentinel cries
“Lights out!” and I must close. This is not Christmas Eve at home. I realize
that.

MARSH.

LIBBY PRISON,
RICHMOND, CHRISTMAS.

DEAR JOHN: My dinner to-day was cornbread, potatoes and
water. It is cold outside and it is cold inside. We have little fuel, either for
cooking or warming.

Some of the prisoners who have money sent out and bought
quite a dinner for themselves. There are a certain few prisoners here,
well-known to the rest of us, who lie quite well, keep close among themselves,
and seem in some mysterious way to be on good terms with the commander of the
prison. They are watched closer than they imagine.

MARSH.

LIBBY PRISON,
RICHMOND, Dec. 30.

DEAR JOHN: Gen. Ben Butler has been appointed Commissioner
for Exchange of Prisoners, but the rebels say he is a “beast,” and won’t
recognize him; so for the present we may abandon all hopes of exchange or
getting home.

The Johnnies have good reason for not liking Ben Butler. He
believes them to be traitors, and handles them accordingly. If we prisoners were
to stay here 10 years, our prayer would be for more Ben Butlers.

The Johnnies also say that they won’t exchange men found
commanding darkies, in fact, they propose to kill all such at sight; that’s he
way the Richmond papers talk. So with this and that, nobody knows when we will
get out of here, if ever. We make calculations on nothing.

The other day, Capts. Sawyer and Flynn, who had been
sentenced to death, were released from solitary confinement and put in here
among the rest of us. They were to be hung in retaliation for a couple of spies
hung by Burnside.

Our Government threatens

TO HANG A SON OF
GEN. LEE,

if Sawyer and Flynn are put to death; and as Lee is
reported as saying he will throw up his commission if his son is hung, Flynn and
Sawyer would seem to be in no danger.

The selection of the two men for hanging was made by lot
about the time we first came to Libby. A hat was passed around with bits of
paper in it to be drawn out. It was a dreadful kind of lottery, two human lives
the stake. I see you did not or could not receive several of my letters; you
make no reference to their contents.

MARSH.

LIBBY PRISON,
RICHMOND, Jan. 2.

DEAR JOHN: New Year’s day was spent by the men in Libby
in trying to keep warm and in trying to see who could make the most noise by
yelling, shouting, singing, cat calls, and by a tremendous pounding on every
pan, pot, kettle and cup that could be gotten hold of.

The lights were allowed to burn till 11, and the outlandish
racket was kept up till that hour. Even after we went to bed, the best singers
were compelled to sit up in bed in the dark and sing songs. Never before did the
New Year come in with such a strange heralding. I am glad it’s all over. My
ears still ring with the awful din.

A few

PRISONERS ARE
CHAINED FAST

in the basement for attempting to escape. They missed the
New Year’s racket, any way. Three others have been put in the penitentiary of
North Carolina in retaliation for something done to some Johnny rebs in the
North.

We hear that the rebel prisoners in the North are treated
like gentlemen and with humanity, not only because it is right, but in the hopes
that the rebels will treat us decently. It is a mistaken hope. Slavery has
brutalized these men. They think it no harm to burn a nigger or starve and kill
a Union prisoner. They don’t even treat the privates of their own army
decently, so the guards told us on the way here from Chattanooga.

I saw with my own eyes dozens of Union men from Tennessee
who had been forced into the rebel army, and who had deserted, chained up, two
and two, and treated like dogs, even by their own neighbors.

The rebel Congress is in session, and a dismal time it is
having trying to devise means to drive every man, boy and child into the army.
The leaders are getting scared and are very desperate. I think they would
sacrifice every bit of property and every man in the Confederacy rather than be
beaten, give up, and take their chances of getting their necks stretched.

When this wicked rebellion does end, as end it must soon, I
hope the leaders will be turned over to Ben Butler, and that he may report them
“all present” or “accounted for” within 24 hours. Benjamin would need no
instructions, and

ROPE IS CHEAP.

I am sure these rabid, fire-eating leaders expect nothing
else, unless some foreign power can be persuaded to interfere and help them beat
us.

The editorials of the Richmond papers are well written, but
are the most desperate toned shrieks I ever read.

No letters from home in two weeks, except the three that
came together, and of nearly the same date. A second little box came, I suppose
from home, but no letter mentioned it. It is a thousand times welcome.

The notorious John Morgan, the raider, visited us in Libby
to-day; so did Gen. A. P. Hill. It is awfully cold, and we suffer. On Belle Isle
a number of the Union prisoners froze to death. It is a wonder they don’t all
die.

The papers say that hundreds and almost thousands of the
poor of Richmond are at the point of freezing and starving, but the rebellion
goes on.

MARSH.

LIBBY PRISON,
RICHMOND, Feb. 2, 1864.

DEAR JOHN: The prison is cold, dark, and gloomy nowadays.
We can hardly see to read in cloudy weather. The Johnnies have put iron bars
over the windows to prevent our escaping, and yet a man gets away occasionally.
We don’t know what becomes of him, whether he reaches the North or is killed,
or, still worse, tied up and starved in some prison hole in the South.

Our dinner to-day consisted of a big chunk or brick of
cold, half-baked corn bread, nothing more. What do you think of it for
cold-weather diet? A great lot of boxes that came for us from the North got as
far as the prison door, and then were all confiscated by the rebels.

Was very sick to-day; fell over in a swoon. Bad diet and
cold will yet kill half of the prisoners here.

Yesterday three prisoners were shot – one of them seven
times – in trying to escape from the island. Killing prisoners has become a
common thing at the Island and down at Andersonville, according to the accounts
in the rebel papers.

I send this by Col. Powell, who is exchanged. There are 900
prisoners here sick in hospital. Things are getting worse daily. The rations are
not fit for dogs, and, besides, we are now in constant danger of some fool
home-guard firing in at the wi[n]dows and killing us.

SUNDAY, Feb. 7.

Five of our comrades died a day or so ago in the prison. So
they are going. Two nights ago a tunnel was completed, and 109 prisoners
escaped. A number have been caught and brought back. Two are reported killed. I
will write all about this escape in another letter.

MARSH.

(***note: the date
on this letter cannot be correct, as the prison escape happened on the night of
Feb. 9, 1864.)

LIBBY PRISON,
RICHMOND, March 3.

DEAR JOHN: Still no exchange, and we are tired to death
waiting. I got a box yesterday, which makes our dinner worth eating. The ration
now is a bit of corn bread, two spoonfuls of rice, and occasionally a bit of
meat.

This order was nailed up in the prison on the 1st:

“Officers standing near the windows will be liable to be
shot.” What do you think of that? I am glad to say the first man killed as
result of this inhuman order was a rebel officer of the prison. He was in the
prison looking about, and, approaching close to a window, a guard mistaking him
for a prisoner, shot him dead. Amen.